By Rob Hardy of Kenilworth, England, but soon to be of Minnesota again

First we were taken into the gallery of the chapel and shown the small organ that once belonged to Lord Chandos, an instrument that Handel surely must have played. Then we were taken down into the chapel itself. White plasterwork stood out against the pale blue of the walls, giving the high-ceilinged room the look of a Wedgewood box—although the plasterwork of the chapel was austere compared with the baroque excesses of the saloon, where the apotheosis of Hercules in plaster dominated the great inverted dish of the ceiling. In the saloon, our Mrs. Rushworth had told us, as she would tell us many times on the tour of the house, that we were standing where Jane Austen had stood and were seeing exactly what Jane Austen had seen. Austen’s cousin, Rev. Thomas Leigh, would have greeted her from the top of these steps, just as Mr. Rushworth stood on the steps of Sotherton and greeted his visitors from Mansfield Park. The remarkable thing about the plasterwork, our guide told us, was that Jane Austen never mentions it in her letters.

Jane Austen visited Stoneleigh Abbey, the ancestral home of her mother’s family, in August 1806. Rev. Leigh, rector of Adlestrop, had recently inherited the estate, and had come to look over the property with an eye to making improvements. He would decide to engage the services of the famous landscape designer Sir Humphry Repton, who would conclude that the property required a lake. But this would happen later, two years after Jane Austen’s visit. For the moment, all the talk was of improvements—and Jane took it all in. Eight years later, she would publish Mansfield Park, in which Stoneleigh Abbey becomes Sotherton, the object of the shallow Mr. Rushworth’s schemes for improvement. (more…)

Review by Diana Birchall

Since little is known about any romance Jane Austen may have had, it’s safe to speculate, and screenwriters Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams have crafted a fantasy in which the not-yet-great novelist nearly elopes with Tom Lefroy, a penniless Irishman given to pugilism and bawdry. Director Julian Jarrold has delivered an overlong film with an uncertain portrayal of its heroine at its superficial heart. Irritatingly, it’s peppered with quotes from Austen’s still unwritten novels improbably stuck in the mouths of her family members. Playing the young genius with a blend of bland insipidity and sophisticated lip gloss that will exasperate even the most tepid Janeite, Anne Hathaway lacks chemistry with the puckish, eyebrow-wiggling James McEvoy as her ill-matched lover.* This gives plenty of room for minor characters such as the impressive, eagle-browed James Cromwell as Rev. Austen and Julie Walters in a Mrs. Bennet-like turn as Mrs. Austen, to steal scenes. Maggie Smith has been rolled out to play the requisite fictional elderly dragon lady, and Anna Maxwell Martin as Jane’s sweet sister Cassandra is also noteworthy. The film is unfailingly pretty, despite a sense of hollow uncertainty that keeps us from being swept into involvement with its principal lady. Fortunately, as a saving grace it rises to a bittersweet, tear-inducing ending. This almost makes you forget the conceptual shakiness of a theme that indicates disappointment in love was the catalyst that made Jane Austen what she became.

*Personally I cannot separate him in my mind from the alarmingly creepy Faun he played in the Narnia movie, but he at least acted very well, while Hathaway has only two expressions, both uninteresting and not remotely indicative of Genius. The first expression says, “I am pretty, especially my dark eyes. There, they are exquisitely made up right now, and I will gaze at the camera deeply and soulfully for two full minutes, and you can have a nice look at them, lucky you.” The second expression says, “All right, you’ve seen how pretty my eyes are. Now I must do some acting.” She thereupon looks down, so the eyes are slightly concealed, and puckers her forehead a little in consternation. There’s a third one, actually, but it has to do with the artful application off camera of gobs of translucent lip gloss. It’s strongly related to the first expression, though.

(Regular AustenBlog readers will remember Diana Birchall’s report on the Becoming Jane script, which was quite positive. Of her changed opinion upon seeing the finished product, Diana tells us, “You may remember that I read the screenplay a year or so ago when it was by Kevin Hood alone, and thought it was extremely, impressively good. Now in the press notes I see that the screenplay is credited to Sarah Williams and Kevin Hood, and it is infinitely less good. Draw what inferences you will, but these things do happen on the way to the big screen.” –Ed.)

We know you’re out there…

Caroline has discovered that a black and white Dutch version of Pride and Prejudice is, as she said, “lurking in the basement of the national tv archives.” She can get a copy, but it will cost €140. Caroline would like to recruit some fellow Dutch Janeites to split the cost. If you are interested in pitching in, contact Caroline at c.r.brevet AT students DOT uu DOT nl (that’s an e-mail address: read it out loud).

The Southern Daily Echo solicited Hampshire’s Top 100 Famous People, and teased that perhaps Jane Austen made the list–and then say one must get the print version to find out! Have any of our Gentle Readers in Hampshire seen the paper, and did Our Jane make the list, and in which position?

Alert Janeite Katie wrote to tell us that the theme of this year’s LGBT Pride celebration in San Francisco is “Pride, Not Prejudice.” Have fun, you crazy kids, and don’t stay out late!